


All My Secrets Away

by AnonymousLaila



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Post s2 finale, it's pretty angsty at first sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-13 11:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11183874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousLaila/pseuds/AnonymousLaila
Summary: Lena knows that Kara is the Girl of Steel and is understandably upset. Kara, desperate to make things right with her friend, decides to come clean and reveal everything about her life and past.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be a little one shot but it's turned into a full blown fic, so sorry about that.

“You knew.”

“… I did.”

“What gave it away?”

Lena twisted the ring on the ring finger of her left hand. “It wasn’t just one thing in particular, more like a fair few hints. You’re not exactly a master of disguise, Kara. But I suppose my suspicions were born when you claimed you flew to my office on a bus.” She looked up pointedly at Kara, lips curled up in a half smile of sorts, her green eyes like mini daggers.

Kara would’ve managed a nervous chuckle at the moment from long ago that Lena was referring to, were it not for the evident hurt in her friend’s voice. They were both in said office, Kara standing over the large white desk at which Lena sat. A setup that both of them had become well acquainted with over the months of their relationship. Kara, however, felt suffocated by the wave of unfamiliar, cold tension that now hung in the air between them.

“I threw my suspicions aside when my alien detection device yielded a negative result for you,” Lena continued, “Until I ran a quick test shortly afterwards on one of my alien employees and he also tested negative. That’s when I took apart the device and found that the inner circuitry had melted. Not fried, or burned out. Melted. Only something as hot as laser vision could have melted vanadium steel alloy that quickly.”

The Kryptonian looked down at her slightly scuffed shoes. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

“From that point, Kara, things just started to add up. I never saw you and Supergirl together side by side, not even at my gala where I had invited you both. Every time she comes to my rescue, she insists that you sent her.” Lena stood up and walked towards the windows, facing the light emanating from the setting sun outside. “That one time you and I were on the phone together, and I was attacked right here by my mother’s henchmen. Supergirl arrived just in time to catch me off the balcony.” She turned back to Kara. “What was it that Supergirl had said? That the two of you were getting coffee together at the time. At 8 o’clock at night.”

Kara reddened. She really needed to work on her cover stories.

“You know, for a while I actually thought you two were dating.”

“ _What_?” The thought was so ridiculous that Kara actually laughed.

“I know, stupid of me, right?” Lena shook her head at her own silly ignorance, “when the two of you turned out to be dating the same man.”

The mentioning of Mon-El made Kara’s breath hitch. The pain wrought from his leaving was long gone but she was really hoping he wasn’t going to be brought up.

“Even then I didn’t want to believe it. I guess that’s why it took so long for everything to click. I didn’t want to believe that my friend Kara is the Girl of Steel and didn’t bother to tell me.”

The edge in Lena's words stung Kara. “I’m so, _so_ sorry for not telling you, Lena,” she began, “for not being as honest as I should have. But if you’re wondering, I did _not_ keep it from you because – “

“- Because of my being a Luthor?” Lena finished the thought. “No, I thought that at first. But I like to think you really meant it when you said you don’t hold my family and last name against me, that you judge people on their own merits.” Kara winced as Lena uttered those last words, reiterations of what Supergirl had once told Lena.

“So I figured maybe you were afraid that my mother would force the secret out of me, or something equally as catastrophic.”

Now they were approaching what Kara knew to be dangerous waters. “Actually… Lillian… she...”

She didn’t have to finish the sentence, for Lena could read it easily on her face. “My mother already knows? _How_?”

“It’s… it’s a long story.”

“God, does everyone in National City know but me?” Lena’s voice started to tremble, her chin quivering in the way it often did whenever she attempted to reign in tears.  “I am an idiot, I really am. To have thought that my only friend in this city might actually trust me with her secrets, when she knows everything there is to know about _my_ life.”

“No, no, Lena, you’re not an idiot, it’s not like that at all!” Kara stepped closer to Lena, resting her hands on the CEO’s slim shoulders. “Only a very few, very small circle of people know my identity, I promise. My parents, Alex…“ She almost said “my closest friends” but caught herself just before the words spilled out of her mouth, for wasn’t Lena supposed to be her best friend? “Those I work with at the DEO as Supergirl...”

“Mike… Mon-El… whatever his real name is.”

Kara took a deep breath. “Yeah, him too. Listen, Lena, it had nothing to do with not trusting you, or – or not wanting you to know. I just… I didn’t want  - ”

Lena pulled away from Kara’s grip. “I get it, Kara. I totally do. I think I’m just… I don’t know what to think.”

They weren’t the worst possible words to come out of Lena’s mouth – Kara had been expecting something to the effect of “I never want to see your lying face again” - but Kara felt a horrible sting all the same.

“Please don’t hate me, Lena,” she pleaded, her eyes threatening to well up. It was a pitiful, desperate plea, but the last thing she wanted was to lose someone she loved because of what she'd quickly realized to be terrible lapse of judgement on her part. _I should have told her sooner. Why didn’t I tell her?_

The dagger eyes softened. “Don’t be silly Kara. How could I hate you?”

“Your mother said you would,” Kara whispered.

Lena raised her left eyebrow. “She told you that?” Kara nodded. “You know better than to think my mother has any idea as to how I feel, Kara. Especially when it comes to how I feel about you.” Now it was Lena’s turn to breathe in deeply. “I’m happy you came clean to me now, and I’m sure you had very valid reasons for wanting to hide the fact that you’re National City’s greatest hero from your bestie. I just, I’m gonna need some time to fully process all of this.”

Kara nodded solemnly. Giving Lena time, that was manageable. “I owe you that much at least, Lena.” She opened her arms wide, inviting Lena in for a hug, and the latter took her up on the silent offer. Kara tried to put everything she couldn’t quite express with words into the hug - the guilt over not giving Lena the benefit of the doubt as she usually did, the gratitude for having such an incredible friend, and the overwhelming love she felt for her.

When they pulled apart, Lena managed a small smile. “Now I know how you give such amazing hugs.”

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Later that night was sister’s night at Kara’s apartment. At 8:35, shortly after Kara returned from L-Corp, Alex came knocking, armed with a large pizza box and pints of Ben and Jerry’s. She only had to set the pizza and ice cream on the dining table and register Kara’s relative lack of enthusiasm for the junk food to know that something wasn’t quite right. Still, she said nothing, knowing her sister would speak up when she was ready to do so.

That moment came while they were in the middle of their Alan Rickman movie marathon. Halfway through _Love_ _Actually_ , Kara put down her spoonful of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. “Lena knows,” she stated matter-of-factly, her eyes still glued to the screen despite her attention for the movie being nearly nonexistent.

Alex took her eyes – now widening - away from the movie and turned towards Kara, almost dropping her pint of mint chocolate chip. “She knows… she knows that you’re…?”

“Yeah.” Kara paused the movie with the TV remote and shifted her entire body on the couch to face her sister, grasping a couch cushion tightly in her arms.

“I’m guessing you didn’t tell her?”

“Actually, I… I kind of did. Alex, she knew Mon-El and ‘Mike’ were the same person.”

“How?”

“I guess she figured it out when she almost had to marry him, Alex.”

Alex pursed her lips. In all honesty, she wouldn’t have put it past Mon-El to have accidentally slipped up and revealed himself to Lena in the short time they were together. “So what happened?”

"She confronted me about it. And I… Alex, I just couldn’t lie to her any more. So I confessed. I took off my glasses in front of Lena and told her I was Supergirl. I even threw in a little dance number in the air in case she wasn’t entirely convinced.”

“How did she react?”

“She laughed a little at my dance, like I knew she would. But, it turns out she kind of knew already, that she had a feeling for a while.”

“Lena’s a very smart young woman,” Alex remarked.

“Uh, that’s a bit of an understatement. Lena is _brilliant_ , and perceptive, and _super_ understanding…“ Kara trailed off once Alex shot her the get-to-the-point look. “… and upset. She’s not very happy now.” Kara rested her chin glumly atop the couch cushion in her arms. In the dim fluorescent glow cast by the TV, her eyes glowed in what Alex found to be an electrifying shade of blue.

Alex did not understand. “Not happy about what?” She asked. “Not happy that you’re Supergirl?”

“No, that I didn’t tell her about it sooner.”

“Well, she can’t exactly blame you for that, can she? For wanting to keep your identity a secret from her, given her family history and all – “

“Not you too!” Kara almost threw the poor couch cushion across the room out of frustration, choosing instead to clutch it even tighter and throw herself against the back of the couch. She had hoped Alex of all people would get it.

After all, Kara noticed how her sister was always suspiciously silent whenever the subject of the young Luthor’s loyalty came into question at the DEO. She thought Alex trusted Lena, too, despite her unfortunate last name. “It had nothing to do with her family and you know it, Alex.”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. “I meant that, the fact that Lena knows who you are now makes her more vulnerable to her mother. Now, I’m not saying," she added quickly when Kara motioned to interject, “that Lena is weak and easily susceptible to her mother’s influence. I’m saying that you know what Lillian is capable of. I mean, for God’s sake, look what happened with Jeremiah.”

There was a moment of silence as Kara considered what Alex said. “The truth is," she said finally, "when I’m around Lena, the only person I have to be is Kara. I’ve never had to be anyone else but my dorky, cheesy self, and I think it’s the same way with her. The burden she bears as a Luthor, all that baggage she carries, so much of it disappears when we hang out. I can see it in her eyes.

“Lena is taken advantage of by just about everyone around her – her own mother, even. And now I just stole what was probably the only source of comfort she had – that she at least had _one_ person in her life who loved her enough to be open and honest with her- and shattered it.” Kara paused to steady the shakiness that had suddenly ravaged her voice.  “To think that her best friend has been guilty like everyone else, guilty of deceiving her, of lying to her about who she was for months… I mean, that’s the very thing I broke up with Mon-El for doing.”

“Kara, what you and Mon-El did were two _very_ different things.”

“Were they really? Because now Lena feels deeply hurt and betrayed, just like how I had felt.”

Alex didn’t know how to respond to that.

Or to the fact that Kara had just used the L word when describing how she felt about Lena.

It brought memories spanning a few months to the surface of her mind – gushings over an office filled with plumerias ( _“She remembered me saying how much I loved them, Alex!”),_ phone calls littered with smiles and giggles, and frequent, excited ramblings of lunch dates and movie nights.

And the crestfallen – almost _heartbroken_ , dare she say – face that now hovered in front of her.

 “You know,” Alex began benignly, “I’ve never seen you so upset over someone like this before.”

Kara turned her head up sharply towards her sister. The two locked eyes in a wordless exchange of intense glares and questioning gazes, before the younger Danvers backed down and looked away, releasing her death grip on the couch cushion and relaxing her tense shoulders.  “I’ve never had anyone in my life like Lena before,” she finally admitted. “I love her, Alex.”

There it was again, that L word.

“And I don’t want to lose what I have with her.”

Alex took her sister’s hands in her own. “I understand, Kara. And you know, I’m sure Lena understands as well.” _I mean, do you see the way she looks at you?_ Alex wanted to say. “She knows your heart is in the right place, as it always is. And besides, now you don’t have to keep a huge part of yourself from her. No more lies and excuses.”

It looked as if a small weight had been lifted from Kara’s chest. “But please don’t let J’onn erase her memories or anything like that when he finds out that she knows… I don’t want her to forg- “

Alex waved the thought away. “Nah, I don’t think J’onn would do that. He gave Winn permission to tell Lena about the DEO, remember? I’m sure he’s fine with Lena knowing you’re Supergirl.”

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Kara was in slightly better spirits after the heart-to-heart. She turned to resume the movie on TV, but her face fell as soon as she glanced over at the coffee table in front of them, which bore the half empty pizza box and ice cream. “Oh no… our ice cream’s all melted.”

Alex sighed and smiled as she watched her sister freeze breath the the liquidy desserts back to life. “I’m sure Lena is thrilled to know that she’s best friends with Jack Frost.”

A couch cushion was thrown gently at her face in response.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Lena did upon returning to her office after the board meeting was pull off her black pumps. She kicked them underneath her desk, vowing to never wear those wretched things before noon ever again, before replacing them with a pair of flats tucked into a hidden drawer at her desk.

She rolled up the sleeves of her blouse and reached into her mini fridge for a bottle of scotch, pouring the drink into a crystal glass she filled halfway with ice and swishing the glass before taking a gulp. She allowed herself to sink into the couch in her office, waiting for the tension to leave her body with each long sip. Drinking at this hour was unbecoming for someone of her stature, but the once scarce habit had unwittingly grown into a band-aid of sorts over the past month.

Things, Lena has witnessed over and over again in that time, are almost never as they seem. Neither are people.

Lex, the closest thing she ever had to a loving family, now behind bars for life for his genocidal crimes. Sweet Jack, under mind control by a money-and-power hungry psychopath and now dead by her own hand. Rhea, the mentor she had always craved, an imperialistic alien with delusions of world domination, whose blood now also stained Lena’s hands.  Lena had used scotch to drown the pangs of every betrayal, of those losses she bore behind the walls of steel built carefully around her heart.

And of her own self-betrayal? Not trusting her instincts. Not seeing what was right before her - that her adorable, bespectacled reporter pal, as it turned out, could lift planes and stop a bullet with her bare hands and _fly_.

Daring to believe that her best friend, the light of her days, would never keep her in the dark about something like this.

 _It’s not because I didn’t trust you_ , Kara had insisted that day in the office, and had repeated in the two days since. But not even her sweet, heartfelt voice could drown out the ugly one in Lena’s head, the one that persistently growled otherwise, that claimed she was unworthy in Kara’s eyes of knowing about Supergirl.

Lena shook her head from side to side as if to wrestle that thought away. She wasn’t being fair. Kara put her career and reputation on the line for Lena, risked her life time and time again for her, cape or no cape. You didn’t do that for someone you didn’t trust. Someone you didn’t love on at least _some_ level.

Someone who almost married your boyfriend. Who then rendered the Earth’s atmosphere too toxic for said boyfriend to live in.

Yes, Kara hid the fact that she was Supergirl from Lena, thereby bruising her trust. But Lena in turn had taken someone important from her.

Lena downed the rest of her scotch and set the glass down on the coffee table in front of her. Also on the table sat a metal cube, a slightly modified version of the device she and Winn had fixed to pump trace amounts of lead into the air, effectively banishing every Daxamite – including Rhea’s son – from Earth.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at the thing without remembering the pain that came with its use, without conjuring in her mind Kara’s grief stricken face after sending a poisoned Mon-El off to some far-flung corner of the galaxy. Lena might have saved the Earth, but in doing so she broke her best friend’s heart.

She couldn’t decide which felt more painful to know: that she’d have to live with this knowledge for the rest of her days, or that Kara would have preferred that she didn’t know about it at all.

Lena reached over and picked the metal box up from the table, turning it in her hands. After the invasion, she had been tempted to destroy the device, fearing that someone (read: Lillian) would get their hands on the machine and do something horrible with it. But then she had a better idea. For the past week, Lena had been tinkering with the box so that it released fixed proportions of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon – the elements of air - into the atmosphere instead of lead. The box also filtered out toxic elements from the air. She’d hoped to sell her new invention to mining companies, like the ones situated north of National City, whose coal mines were at times filled with toxic or oxygen-deprived air that endangered miners. But the other L-Corp board members had shot down the proposal at the meeting today, claiming the device had low marketability because it only needed to be used once. Apparently fending off an alien invasion was easier than convincing old white men that something could be both safe and profitable.

After setting the machine back down on the table, Lena went to grab a leftover piece of a chocolate donut from the little box on her desk. The sugary guilty pleasure was just as soft as when Kara had it sent over earlier that morning (Now she knew why Kara’s food gifts were always so fresh – she could zoom them across a city in seconds). Lena reread the note attached to the box, written lovingly in Kara’s quick scrawl:

_Lena,_

_Picked up some of your fave donuts before work b/c I know you like to skip breakfast before early morning meetings. Don’t worry, they’re fat free (still don’t understand why you do that to yourself!). Hope your meeting goes A++, maybe we can meet up later? If you don’t want to see me just give me the word and I’ll keep my distance, but I wish you luck all the same._

_Love, Kara <3_

The “love, Kara <3” at the end choked Lena up when she first read the note, and even now the words threatened to lodge a lump in her throat. That Kara didn’t hate her after sending her boyfriend off into space - still cared so much for her, even - shook Lena. The Kryptonian truly was an angel, one that had fallen from the sky, so to speak, into the youngest Luthor’s world.

Lena already knew she owed Kara her life tenfold. But as she now realized, she owed Kara so much more.

At the very least, she owed Kara some understanding. The benefit of the doubt. All the love and support that Kara always gave her. That they always gave each other.

She whipped out her phone and dialed Kara’s number. When the call went to voicemail she pulled up her messages. Her thumbs hovered over the brightly lit phone screen, wondering what she wanted to say, how she wanted to word it. Finally, she texted, _Hey, Kara. Thanks again for the donuts, you’re the best. If you wanna take a break from work and from saving the city, would you like to stop by?_

Lena waited ten minutes for a reply that didn’t come. But as she then sat down to e-mail L-Corp’s CFO for a budget proposal request, a flash of red and blue flew through the open balcony doors. Supergirl planted her red boots on the floor of the office.

“Lena,” she breathed. She looked slightly out of breath.

Lena looked the girl of steel up and down. It would take a while for her to get used to the fact that this was the same girl she gushed over boy bands with. “Supergirl... Kara…” She stepped forward, moved by the sudden urge to wrap her arms around the superhero, but in doing so a pungent odor swallowed her senses.

“Is - is that gun powder on your suit?”

Kara looked down. “Oh. Armed robbery at the National City Bank.” Looking back up and seeing the look of alarm that quickly spread over Lena’s face, she added, “Don’t worry, I handled it. Bad guys have been taken in by police, all four of them. You’d think people would learn the whole bulletproof thing by now.”

Lena smiled and pulled Kara in for a tight hug. Hugging Kara in her supersuit was strange, but in a wonderful way. It made Lena realize how much she was holding back in all her past hugs with Kara and she squeezed tighter, assured that Kara could handle her puny strength.

“Does this mean we’re besties again?” Kara mumbled from within Lena’s embrace.

“No, I’m hugging you because I hate you, silly.” They broke apart slowly, gazing at one another, arms still entangled together somewhat. The softness, the vulnerability that suddenly overtook Kara’s eyes made Lena’s feel as they were about to melt.

“These past couple of days, I stayed away,” Kara began. “I wanted to give you space. In case you didn’t want to see or hear from me.”

Lena shook her head. “Kara…” She hunted for the right words to say. “You make it sound as though you did something terrible that I have to forgive you for.”

“I did, Lena.” Her voice ached with unwarranted remorse.

“No, you didn’t. You hid the fact that you’re not one, but _two_ of the most wonderful people in National City. For Gods sake, you fly around in your free time helping citizens, stopping armed robberies,” she gestured towards Kara’s gunpowder-covered suit, “saving my life. Over and over again.”

“But I lied to my best friend about who I was.”

“You had your reasons. Good ones, I’m sure.” Lena secretly hoped Kara would tell her what those reasons were, but she didn’t want to press it. Not til her friend was ready.

Kara took a deep breath. “I want to make it up to you.”

“You don’t have to –”

“But I want to.” After a long pause, Kara asked, “Are you free this Friday evening?”

Lena briefly ran the week’s schedule through her head. “I’ll probably be finished with work by 7. Maybe even  6:30.”

The grin that then overtook Kara’s face was blinding. “If you’re up for it, there’s somewhere cool I want to take you.”

 


End file.
